


bring us goodness and light

by anamatics



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Holidays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-13
Packaged: 2018-09-03 10:50:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8709505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anamatics/pseuds/anamatics
Summary: A collection of holiday themed prompts.





	1. Beaujolais

Lean’s rule is simple: look, but do not touch. Flirt, but do not commit. Enjoy the game, but never, ever allow yourself to be played.  She paints her lips red as blood and gets her nails done to match. Her make up is war paint, her nails sharp enough to draw blood. Every one of these functions is a battle for the hearts and minds of National City. Every one of these functions is years off Lena’s life, her cheeks burning from her fake smile and her jaw numb from the painkillers she took to stop the ache of her grinding her teeth.

The L-Corp holiday party is held the first weekend of December. It’s cool in National City, Lena’s dress is black and backless. She’s chilly, but draped with a red scarf and wearing the most uncomfortable pair of expensive shoes she’s ever had the odious pleasure of putting on her feet.  They make her tall, like her makeup and dress, they are her battle garb. She drinks wine. Just one glass of the Beaujolais Nouveau. Red lipstick stains the gold-rimmed lip of her glass.

Across the room, a friend stands with a gaggle of press, looking a little too well-dressed and at ease for this to be her first party among the rich and famous of National City. Kara’s wearing a pretty green dress, her hair pinned up on top of her head. She turns, chatting with James Olsen and Lena’s fingers twitch. Kara’s back is a canvas of rippling, well-defined muscles. Lena looks down at the empty wineglass in her hands and wonders if the aching urge to touch the rippling muscles at Kara’s back is because of the Beaujolais.

Kara glances over her shoulder then, her eyes soft behind her glasses, and Lena’s mouth goes dry.  Kara smiles, her expression just a little triumphant, and plucks the toothpick from her martini, and pops one of the olives into her mouth. Her lips curl around the fruit, her eyes never leave Lena, the motions of her lips exaggerated. Lena swallows, hard. Her cheeks feel flushed and there’s a coiling of heat in her belly that spreads down to crawl between her legs and ache at the sight of Kara Danvers.

Kara winks at her, and turns back her conversation.

Lena has another glass of wine. She fingers her necklace and watches Kara move across the room. She could go up to her, could make up some flimsy excuse to get Kara alone. She could push her up against a wall, and shuck that dress up around her waist and push her fingers into Kara while her teeth bit into the hard muscle of Kara’s back. The muscles that are distracting, working as Kara moves, rippling. Lena bites her lip, the warmth in her belly spreading further still. She could do it, Kara would come along without a word, Kara would be agreeable, pliant. Lena’s picked up on those signs. Kara likes powerful people. Lena’s the best National City has to offer without—

It’s just then that Lena is pulled into a conversation with the mayor. Asked to comment on a few of the proposed city ordinances that will inevitably make her business dealings more challenging in the future. Lena says her piece, tries to persuade him of her role as a job creator in National City and again expresses her displeasure at his proposal. 

He puts his hand on her shoulder, his skin is rough.  Lena shrugs him off and steps away.  He moves to follow her. Lena shakes her head. “You’ve said your piece,” she says. “I’ve said mine. There’s nothing more we need to discuss.”

“If you want to do business in this city, you have to work with me, Ms. Luthor.” The Mayor’s tone is mild, but his eyes tell a different story.  He’s not used to being rebuffed, not used to being told no by women in Lena’s position. “I’d hate to have the building permits for your laboratory facility held up because of red tape.”

Lena levels a glare at him. “Is that a threat, sir?”

“Just a word of advice.” The mayor tips his glass of scotch to her, and this time, when he reaches out, Lena lets his hand brush against her shoulder without flinching away.  She lets him steer her out onto the dance floor. Dances with him to some old Billie Holiday while he chatters about his efforts to get a rider added to a bill down in Sacramento to protect the docks in National City. It goes in Lena’s ear and out the other. She’ll buy her favor from the press before she buys it from a crooked politician.

Across the dance floor, Kara is dancing with Matt or Mike or whatever his name was. He seems friendly enough, but sad, too like Kara to warrant much more than a passing glance. Lena watches as Kara swing him around the dance floor.  She’s leading. It’s funny to watch as Matt-Mike gets his footing and figures out the steps. She’s talking to him in a low voice. Her lips are moving in a language Lena doesn’t recognize. He’s responding in kind, laughing. Trying to dip her.  And now Kara’s laughing and Lena’s seeing red.

Kara’s eyes meet Lena’s then, over Matt-Mike’s shoulder, and her smile is sinfully wicked, hungry even. It lays Lena bare and send warm red blotches of blush across Lena’s neck. This is their game.

 _Some enchanted evening_ , the music goes. _You may see a stranger across a crowded room_. Lena’s fingers twitch on the mayor’s shoulder and he backs away.  “Ms. Luthor? Is everything alright?”

“Yes,” Lena says. She backs away.  “All this dancing, with the wine, I’m feeling a bit lightheaded.” She turns then, walks away in her awful shoes and goes to stand in the corner, accepting the water than a caterer offers her without a word.  Kara’s still dancing with Matt-Mike, but she’s glancing over at Lena with that same hungry look.

Lena drains her water, sets the glass down very deliberately, and walks out of her own party. The click, click, click of her heels on the floor is soon joined by another, second pair of too tall heels. This hallway leads out to a wide balcony overlooking the harbor and city skyline. A little thrill runs up Lena’s spine. There will be smokers out there, and possibly some more private liaisons. They won’t be alone. Will the presence of others scare her quarry off? Will it ruin the game?

The breeze off of the harbor is chilly.  Lena wraps her scarf around her shoulders. The little wisps of her hair that have worked their way out of their bobby pins tickle at the back of her neck. She leans on her forearms and looks out over the city. It’s beautiful at night, lit up for Christmas, but Californian Christmases are always a letdown.  Lena went to Swiss boarding school, she misses the Alps, misses _snow_ at this time of year.

“What did the mayor want?” Kara’s there, beside her. A warm, taller presence that Lena deliberately does not lean toward. Kara’s like a furnace, warm as the very sun long gone from the sky now.  A clock in the distance chimes eleven. 

“A favor.” Lena answers. “How is Matt?”

“Mike.” Kara corrects.  Lena winces.  She’s usually so good with names. Maybe he’s just forgettable. “He’s fine. Excited to come to a party like this. It’s his first on thi—since he got here.”

“I was meaning to ask: You weren’t speaking to him in English. Where is he from?”

Kara reaches up, adjusts her glasses. She smiles prettily. “Here and there. He spent some time on Madagascar most recently. Zimbabwe before then.” It’s a lie. Kara’s not a great liar, except about the important things.

“Are his parents ex-pats?”

Kara shrugs. “Does it matter? I don’t want to talk about him right now.”  She sidesteps a little closer to Lena. Their forearms brush.

“Oh,” Lena says. She looks up at Kara through the fake eyelashes they’d glued into her eyes before the party.  “What did you want to talk about?”

This is it, this is their game. Kara plays it well. Plays it like she’s an expert, and Lena reminds herself that she’s not Kara’s first dance. She’s heard the stories, heard about the long hours Kara put in during her tenure with Cat Grant.

It’s why, when Kara leans forward, Lena lets Kara initiate the kiss. Lets Kara brush her barely parted lips against the corner of her mouth.  She lets Kara bite at her lower lip, lets Kara cup her face, gentle, soft, saccharine sweet.

There’s a way Kara’s looking at Lena as Lena runs a hand along Kara’s neck and tangles it in the hair at her nape that’s just tinged with just barely hidden triumph. Lena’s wanted her all night. Let herself be teased all night. Kara’s body language is submissive, she takes what Lena gives her, the kiss, the touch, the press of lips. She lets Lena push her back against the balcony railing sucking on Lena’s tongue, biting at Lena’s lip, Lena’s hand closing over her breast in that dress, the other scraping along those muscles.

This whole scene is playing out how Kara wants it. The whispered confessions of desire, the way Kara’s lips are swollen with kisses and she looks blissed out but still manages to whisper in Lena’s ear exactly where they can go to be alone.  Her fingers dip across the swell of Lena’s ass when she speaks, her lips nips at Lena’s earlobe. 

When Lena drops to her knees later on, behind the locked door of the very nice bathroom of the event center after Kara’s assured her there’s no one else inside, the manipulation is telling.  Kara wanted this, exactly this way. Lena’s eating her out with a smile on her face and Kara’s got Lena’s lipstick smeared across her mouth as her head tilts back and she whimpers before she comes. This is their game, after all.

Sometimes Lena lets herself be played.


	2. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Putting Up the Tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> note: I borrowed aspects of the way an ice age manifested from The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin, which is an absolutely lovely book and I really want encourage everyone to read it and the sequel. Nothing other than homage is intended.

Alex doesn’t believe in doing the whole Christmas thing. Kara respects this, and she respects Alex’s reasons for doing it. They’re rooted in Jeremiah, in that sense of loss that comes around this time of year for Alex that cuts Kara deeply because it’s a hurt she cannot heal. They’re also for Kara, who doesn’t celebrate. She likes the lights and the idea of St. Lucy’s Day and tree lighting ceremonies and the story of the first Christmas tree.  She loves the idea of snow in a place like National City, but the holiday carries no meaning for her.

“If I had to pick a holiday closest to the rites of winter on Krypton, it’d be Diwali. I’ve been doing research, you know. Because nothing fits and it’s just wrong and I want somewhere to go if I have to live here forever.”

They’d been seventeen and fourteen then, it was Christmas Eve. Kara lay on her back staring up at the sky, the stories of Krypton on her lips.  They did this, hiding away from everything up on the roof where the stars were their only companions. She stared up at up that that blank space where Krypton once was, where Rao still shone its weak red light.  They were up on the roof; Alex had her telescope and was staring at Kara’s star.

“That’s the light festival in like, India, right?” Alex tugged her cap over her ears.  It wasn’t cold for Kara, but it was cold enough that Alex wanted a hat. Kara was jittery, wanting to escape the chaos of the gathered family downstairs and the choking feeling of not quite fitting in, not quite matching the humans she now called family. “When they put lights everywhere and choke out the dark? Good triumphs over evil?”

Kara nodded. “Only on Krypton, it’s a celebration of the clearing of ash that plunged the planet into an …” she said the word in Kryptonese, tilted her head and frowned, the English elusive. “Coating the world in ice and darkness?”

“An ice age.” Alex answered. She lowered her head to the telescope.  “I didn’t know those happened other places.”

“They do.” Kara said. “We remember that time in the darkness, and the people who died because our core was unstable and we were not prepared.  Millions of people died in that winter. The light is how we remember their sacrifice.”

Alex didn’t say anything after that.

 

Kal sends her a Christmas card every year.  Kara kind of hates it. She doesn’t send one back. She takes the five dollar bill that Martha Kent sends dutifully in her own card and gives it to a homeless person. She writes a thank you note and politely explains, again, that the holiday has no meaning to her and that the money is better spent on the farm.

She puts it in a mail box outside of her apartment, and tugs her coat tight around her. She wanders the city, because this holiday just serves as a reminder that she is a carrier of the memories of an entire culture. The weight is crushing, watching people scurry into churches and light their lights for all the wrong reasons.

And that’s what she hates, that feeling that it’s _wrong_. Because it isn’t, she’s just different. And she’s had to accept that over her years on Earth.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, nonetheless.

 

The lights in the L-Corp plaza are dazzling. Kara’s come back here more than once, lost in thought and caught up in memories of her mother and the fast of the festival, of being drawn out of bed in the wee hours of the morning to eat something before the sun came up and the starving time began. She remembers her mother’s warm hands wrapping her in blankets and drawing her to the atrium once she’d finished eating, telling her stories of the of the starving times.  She doesn’t eat on Christmas Day because of it. Instead she sits, thinking about how the loss of her entire culture is like a great gaping hole in her chest.

“Kara?” She looks up from the bench to see Lena Luthor, car keys in hand and her laptop bag slung over her shoulder along with her purse and a small bag of brightly wrapped presents.

“Hey,” Kara says. She wants to leave. The last person she wants to share aching pain with is Lena Luthor. She gets to her feet, fiddles with her glasses.  “I was just… um, looking at the lights. I didn’t mean to linger…”

“It’s not like I own the building, Kara, the atrium is a public space.” Lena laughs. She glances around.  “The lights are nice, huh?”

“The remind me of home, in a way.” Kara says, and it’s a slip that they both don’t acknowledge.  Kara’s pretty sure Lena knows anyway. They’re not talking about it. “All that light, shining bright in the darkness.”

Lena bites her lip, hesitates just for a moment, before holding out her free hand.  “Come home with me.”

Kara takes her hand. “Why?”

“Because no one should be alone when they’re looking that melancholy.” 

 

Lena’s apartment is quiet, on the top floor of a residential building among hundreds of other families. It’s so _normal_ that sometimes Kara forgets that Lena’s sitting on a multi-billion dollar company with government defense contracts and a strong humanitarian agenda that has them involved in more countries than it’s not doing clean water development work. Lena kicks off her shoes and dumps her keys on the counter.  The bag of gifts follows and she sighs, catching Kara looking at them.  

“I hate the obligation of Christmas.” She fingers the wrapping paper of a package. “People buy me things when I don’t want them. I give people things when they don’t want them. I got a tiny tree but I haven’t decorated it.”

Kara takes the gift from Lena before she pick apart the bow on it and glances over to the window.  A small tree in a pot sits in the window.  “That’s like… the smallest saddest tree ever, Lena.”

“I got it at Trader Joe’s.”

“Seriously?” Kara laughs.

“I’m a very busy woman, Kara, be thankful I still buy my own groceries.” Lena pauses, hesitating. “You don’t celebrate, do you?”

“I don’t.” Kara answers. She doesn’t elaborate. Lena doesn’t as her to. “But thanks for wanting to make sure I had company on this holiest of nights.” She says it bitterly. It tastes sour in her mouth.

Lena says nothing.  She goes to the cupboard and takes down two glasses and rummages through the gifts until she finds one that looks suspiciously bottle shaped.  She unwraps it, reads the label, and lets out a happy sound that could be a giggle. 

Kara tilts her head, half-silhouetted in the light streaming in from the stars above. 

“Good vintage,” Lena explains.  “Let me get a corkscrew.”  She finds one and comes over, gifts forgotten.  She’s quick with a cork screw, quicker still to set the bottle aside to allow it to breathe.  “Drinking alone on Christmas is also not advisable.”

“You say this like I can get drunk.” Kara mutters.  Like there’s not a flask of some alien liquor from M’gann that’s strong enough to peel paint ,  tucked away in her purse for a day when she’s feeling particularly morose. 

“You like the taste just fine.” Lena answers, nudging Kara just slow enough for Kara to remember to make herself soft.  She takes Kara’s hand and leads her to the couch, where they can look up at the stars and Lena’s pathetic little Christmas tree.

 

“We should put lights in your sad tree.” Kara says, after they’ve finished the wine and she’s had a few nips of M’gann’s death liquor. “Because fuck if I like Christmas but I like the lights and we should remember those who died in the cold and the dark without Rao’s light.”

Lena frowns, drunken features soft and confused. “Cold and the dark?”

Kara hiccups, frowns, and looks down at her empty glass. “I’m an alien.” She announces.  Because that seems logical.

“I know.” Lena pats her shoulder.  “You’re not very good at hiding with all those – _hic –_ muscles.”

“You like my muscles.”

“I do.” Lena hums, running her fingers along Kara’s bicep.  “What happened in the cold and the dark?”

“There’s a festival, in India that is more like home than anything else.” Kara sits back, curling into Lena’s very comfortable couch. “All that light on the rooftops, drowning out the night.”

“Wait… I think I was in India, when that happened last. All the light everywhere and everyone in orange? What’s it called?”

“Diwali. When did you go to India?”

“Right around the time you got buried in that article about the oil pipeline going through Midvale.” Lena answers.

“Oh right.” Kara sits back. She shivers. “That disaster.”

“Like the cold and the dark?”

Kara shakes her head. “There was an ice age. The planet’s core was unstable and the tectonic instability created this five year long winter. It was thousands of years ago, but we still remember that moment when the darkness looked like it could win by lighting the way of all those souls who died as they head back to Rao’s light.”

Lena is quiet. “Are there things you need to say?”

“Yes.” Kara says quietly. She’s not even sure she remembers everything.

“Do you want me to be here?”

The words catch in Kara’s throat. Lena gets to her feet, stumbles to a closet and produces a small string of fairy lights.  Kara forces the words out. “It’s a call and response.”

“I don’t speak…” Lena begins. She looks at Kara then, bending to plug in the lights. Their warm glow fills Lena’s living room. Kara takes the lights and starts to string them through the tiny tree.

“It isn’t hard. Human tongues can’t really slide like they’re supposed to, but … we’ll make it work.”

 

Kara says the words and Lena says them back. She cannot speak Kryptonese to save her life and it’s hilarious to listen to her try and speak it with a Gaelic accent, and then a German one.  While it’s sad, it’s the first time that Kara’s felt okay on this night in a long time. The lights shine out in the darkness, Lena’s hand is warm at the back of her neck, and her lips are gentle, kissing away her tears.

 


End file.
